*click*

dev.null.org will be offline until at least the weekend, thanks to the morons at the upstream ISP putting in the wrong subnet when upgrading the link. Though at least now my email should be working again. The offers of dubious financial and medical services should start coming in again any moment now.

Blog-in-exile

• Britain and Northern Europe likely to face new ice age 'within decades', thanks to global warming. (via FmH)
• New Line to film His Dark Materials trilogy -- after purging them of their atheist/humanist subtexts.
• this photo is just wrong. (marginally worksafe, though deeply disturbing; via tyrsalvia)
• Gibson's Law in action again: as porn becomes a commodity, spammers start giving it away in return for "captcha" solutions, bypassing are-you-a-human tests and giving them bucketloads of free webmail accounts.
• A Danish biotech firm is developing flowers which detect land mines. The genetically modified flowers change colour when their roots come in contact with nitrogen dioxide from explosives.
• Hutton report damns BBC, completely clears Blair; BBC chairman resigns, entire Board of Governors expected to follow, and Blair looks much like the cat that ate the canary. With the BBC's charter up for redrawing, this could lend much impetus towards the emasculation of the rogue news organisation into something altogether more controllable. Perhaps they could hire Senator Alston as a depoliticisation consultant?